The Global Gender Gap Report 2007

At the World Economic Forum we recognize that the advancement of women is an important economic, business and societal issue with a significant impact on the growth of nations. Thus, for several years, we have explicitly incorporated aspects of gender equality into our measures of competitiveness and fostered dialogue within our Women Leaders Programme. More recently, we launched our Global Gender Gap Report series, aimed at capturing the magnitude of the gap between women and men in four critical areas: economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment and health and survival.

As policy-makers and business leaders seek to address talent shortages, it is becoming increasingly urgent to close gender gaps and leverage the talents of both women and men. Addressing this challenge will require a multistakeholder approach. At the World Economic Forum, our mission is to improve the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We aim to respond to the need for mainstream dialogue and partnerships to address the global gender gap through the creation of a new Gender Parity Group. The Group will be a multistakeholder community of 100 highly influential leaders—50 women and 50 men—from business, politics, academia, the media and civil society. Its mission will be to examine the specific challenges and opportunities linked to the global gender gap in business, education, politics and health; exchange best practices and collectively construct creative and viable strategies to optimize the use of talent. Our goal is that the data and messages contained in this Report will serve as a framework for the work of this community.